


Schism

by RonnieSilverlake



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Brothers, Angst, Canon Temporary Character Death, Despair, Gen, broganes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 16:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14898111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RonnieSilverlake/pseuds/RonnieSilverlake
Summary: Later, Keith genuinely cannot recall the next few seconds. It’s like his brain just short-circuits as the volcano of his rage erupts; he only knows what must have happened because he looks at his bruised knuckles later and sees the evidence.(Or, the one where Keith flukes out of the Galaxy Garrison, suspiciously timed together with the failure of the Kerberos mission.)





	Schism

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of an AU written in roleplay form on tumblr with my friend [Claire](http://madefate.tumblr.com), where Keith and Shiro are adoptive brothers. A lot of details are worked out in relation to their relationship and shared past, but none are prerequisite to this story.

Keith will not admit that he’s been counting the days, but – yeah, he’s totally been counting the days, and now the first half of the two months is almost up. It’s been a sunny day, and with this thought in the back of his mind, it’s no wonder Keith’s been having a fine time of it. Coupled together with the best possible mark one could get on the flight simulator in his pocket, and the fact that he even had lunch with a few classmates (though one of them kept glaring at him for some reason, a cargo pilot whose name Keith doesn’t remember), he’s in a particularly good mood when he gets back to the dorms, the same small handful of rooms he’s been sharing with his brother for the last three or so years. (Shiro could have moved out, when he finished his studies and got promoted, but he wanted to stay together with Keith, and didn’t want Keith to be singled out among classmates for living at the officers’ quarters, so they just stayed. Keith himself really doesn’t give a damn where they sleep, when both of them spend almost all their time in the simulator, on the range, the training decks, or the library.)

While figuring out what to have for dinner, Keith switches on the TV for some background noise. He doesn’t really pay attention to it, focused instead on whisking together some eggs to scramble. Only when he hears the word Kerberos does he turn, a sudden, excited throb in his chest.

What he sees turns excitement into cold, hard dread in a matter of _seconds_.

“… missing, and all crew members are believed to be dead…”

Over the sound of the bowl of eggs crashing to the floor out of Keith’s hand, he almost misses the next phrase.

“… Pilot error.”

It’s all happening too fast, the newsreel only a few seconds, for Keith to really process what he’s just heard, but he knows one thing: those two words ignite a deep-seated fury in him, the likes of which he hasn’t felt in years. **_What?!_** _There is no way – no **fucking** way Shiro – !!_

_Shiro…!_

He doesn’t even bother cleaning up the remainders of his half-made dinner. He grabs his keys and his jacket, and sprints down the corridor, quite literally seeing red, and not quite hearing the small handful of concerned voices calling after him.

“Is that Keith…?”

“Hey, are you okay, buddy? Where are you going? It’s almost curfew…!”

“Keith!”

“Did you guys see the news?!”

It takes the better part of a minute to start the hoverbike, though Keith’s senses are so jumbled it seems to him the vehicle doesn’t want to cooperate – he doesn’t realize it’s because his hand is shaking so badly he can’t quite find the ignition with the tip of the key. Eventually, he jams it in its place, and the bike roars to life like it has a hundred times before, with Shiro at the wheel and Keith the passenger. (The thought is a pang of – something. Not quite pain; not yet. Keith almost smiles as he thinks of all those times; he used to sit in front of Shiro when he was too small to do otherwise, up until that accident where Shiro braked too hard and Keith smacked his face into the dash. _Mom was so pissed at him. It was funny._ Later, when Keith grew taller, and Shiro still took him riding despite the incident and the dressing down they got for it, he sat behind his brother, arms around Shiro’s waist.)

Keith jumps on it on his own now, revving a bit before speeding towards the main buildings of the Galaxy Garrison. Technically, Shiro didn’t let him use the bike while he was away, but Keith has been taking it out every once in a while anyway, knowing Shiro wouldn’t really mind if Keith took good care of it. To start off with, if nobody touched it for two months, the battery would be dead when Shiro came back – and secondly, when it comes to sheer skill, Keith is actually less likely to crash the thing than even Shiro himself. Keith has played this argument in his head every time he used the bike in the last few weeks, and, like he’s on autopilot, it climbs back to the forefront of his mind now, replaying the same words as if he expects to have this conversation with Shiro in a matter of a month or so.

As if his brother isn’t _missing in action_.

* * *

The campus is big; even though the hoverbike is fast, it’s still completely dark and well past the start of curfew by the time Keith pulls into the parking lot of central headquarters. Perhaps it’s the looming nature of the building that finally brings back the earlier sense of dread; a chill runs down his spine as he looks up at it, and he slips inside quickly and quietly, then takes the stairs three at a time anyway, uncaring of being discovered at being at a place where he shouldn’t be at this time of the evening.

Strangely, out of the few faculty members he meets on his way, nobody tries to stop him. If he was any more clear-headed than he is right now, Keith would realize they all know what happened; two of the female teachers he passes just look at each other, a strange look on their faces Keith only later realizes was upset mixed with pity. He doesn’t really pay attention right now, though; his defense mechanism is the single-mindedness with which he stomps towards his goal.

“Commander Iverson!” Somewhere, he _knows_ he is being incredibly rude, just bursting through the door without even knocking or saying good evening, but – he is really beyond caring. “I just saw on the news – the mission – _what happened?!_ ”

Iverson only looks startled for a moment, then stands from his chair, shutting his computer. “It is past curfew, _cadet_ ,” he says cooly, and Keith knows it already, even while hanging onto the last threads of his composure, that this can only go downhill. “You should be in your quarters.”

“I know,” Keith swallows, forces himself to add, “ _sir_ , but I need to know – ”

“You do not.” Keith feels like his air flow was cut off, he falls silent so quickly, face paling. Is Iverson really not going to tell him…? Why –

“Sir, I just – the news said – ”

“If you watched the news,” Iverson cuts him off again, a vein starting to visibly jump on his forehead, “you know all there is to know that isn’t classified.”

It’s that last word that really does it for Keith.

“Pilot error?” he bursts out, his voice simmering with the anger he feels, all of a sudden back at the forefront. He doesn’t care that it’s his commanding officer he’s shouting at at the top of his lungs. Hell, he barely even sees Iverson standing in front of him; he doesn’t really see anything from the blind rage that’s burning him up. “ ** _Pilot error?!_** How – how _dare_ you! There is no way _Shiro_ crashed that ship!” Iverson opens his mouth again, but Keith yells over him, fingers curling into fists at his sides. “My brother is your _best fucking pilot!_ There is no! Way!!”

“ _Was_ , you mean,” the Commander manages to get in.

Later, Keith genuinely cannot recall the next few seconds. It’s like his brain just short-circuits as the volcano of his rage erupts; he only knows what must have happened because he looks at his bruised knuckles later and sees the evidence.

He raises his already curled fist and _socks_ Iverson in the eye, hard enough to bruise.

The next moment he really knows himself is when he’s being held in a vicelike grip by two other senior officers, with both his arms twisted behind his back. Iverson is still standing in front of him, though looking decidedly worse for wear, with his left eye swollen and a trickle of blood starting from his nose and dripping over his mouth as he shouts.

Over the curious ringing in his ears, Keith can’t make out the entirety of the Commander’s speech, but the gist is clear enough. Keith has brought shame to the Garrison, and earned himself a dishonourable discharge. He is to be escorted back to the dormitory, where he is allowed to gather his belongings, then off the premises, where he is never allowed to enter again.

* * *

Someone brings Shiro’s bike.

Keith doesn’t know who, nor does he care enough to pay attention. It’s kind of a daze now; the anger is still there, barely manageable and only because he managed to expel a little bit of it. It wasn’t worth it, and he knows it, but still he can’t yet find it in himself to regret this. He gets a ride back behind Ryu, the senior range instructor. She gives him another one of those pitying looks, then doesn’t speak to him at all during the whole ride, nor later when she stands in the door and watches him gather his – _their_ – belongings.

There is no point to leaving anything behind; it’s not like Shiro is coming back.

It’s starting to feel really _weird_ , the way Keith knows he should feel _something_ , several things maybe, but he’s still too numb for it to be anything other than a statement of fact. For the moment, he doesn’t allow himself to slow down to examine any of the ice chips of confusion swirling inside him. He goes through his own room methodically, emptying every nook and cranny, and then proceeds to Shiro’s, where he does the same. He could wonder if he is missing anything, it’s not like he knew his brother’s every secret, but the rooms’ layout is actually the exact same, and Keith is almost completely certain he’s found every hiding place in his own, so the likelihood of missing something important in Shiro’s is relatively low.

Save for one brief dusting stint about a week ago, Keith hasn’t actually come inside Shiro’s room during the other’s absence. Even when the two of them were at terrible odds with each other, Keith was never the kind of person who would disrespect privacy. He had no reason to dig through Shiro’s stuff until now. He doesn’t really do that now, either; he just packs it all together with his own, the clothes, the books, the small handful of knickknacks Shiro has gathered throughout his decade or so living here, the disk drives of computer data (and some movies Keith pirated for him and watched together with him on some evenings), the laptop itself.

Surprise is the first actual emotion that penetrates the cloud surrounding his head; it comes when he finds an envelope addressed to him. It’s propped against the window in the corner of the sill, semi-hidden behind the curtain. With the first feeling, the second comes – curiosity – but Keith stuffs them both back down with the same motion he stuffs the envelope into his jeans pocket, to look at it later.

When he finally steps back out into the living area with two stuffed duffel bags on one shoulder, a third one in his other hand, he finds Ryu in the kitchen, washing out a dishcloth. It’s only then that Keith realizes she has mopped up the ruins of his dinner, threw away the shards of the glass bowl too. He’s not quite sure why _this_ is the thing that finally gets to him enough to cause his eyes to sting.

“I’m sorry, Keith,” she says at the main gate ten minutes later. “Take care of yourself.”

“Thank you, sir,” Keith replies, throat tight. While they wait for the gate to be opened, he steps a foot down onto the ground; the balance of the bike has become a little precarious with this much luggage. Ryu looks like she wants to say something else, but in the end, she just nods, and motions forward, to where the way has been freed for him to leave, then turns around and leaves where she’s come from, back to the main building.

Keith drives for the better part of an hour before he stops to take a break. He’s unsure of where he is or where he’s going, and he still feels numb rather than anything else, which is starting to bother him a little. Sure, maybe a truck stop on the interstate in the middle of Arizona is not the best place to have a meltdown; it’s probably just survival instincts, right?

More just to do something with himself while he catches a breather than anything else, Keith tugs out the folded envelope from his pocket, and tears it open.

It’s a single sheet of paper, with one lonesome line in Shiro’s neat handwriting, and a couple of numbers.

Well, at least Keith knows where to go now.

* * *

It’s a shack.

A run-down _dump_ is more like it, Keith thinks, but it’ll do for a place to stay for tonight, whatever this actually _is_. At least, he is fairly certain it’s a safe place, considering Shiro’s message said _in case of emergency_.

He probably didn’t anticipate Keith getting _expelled_ being the emergency, Keith thinks vaguely as he drops the duffel bags next to the door of the single-room house, and looks around. There is an eerie quality to this place, he decides, wherein it feels both strange and familiar at the same time.

This doesn’t last very long, however. Within a few minutes of poking around, Keith comes to the startling realization that the sense of familiarity comes from many of the things inside _being_ familiar. The shelving in one corner used to be their pantry at home, and the stereo was their father’s (and before that, their grandfather’s, it’s an incredibly, laughably old thing that was probably at their house before Keith was even born). The small coffee table and the foldout couch turn out to be from Gran’s place – Keith thought Shiro threw all of it out when Gran passed away.

At first, the numbness starts to fade gradually. Keith begins to feel like his chest is just a little too tight to breathe comfortably, and _now_ he realizes his hands tremble as he holds them up in front of his face. But it’s the **_picture_** that does away with the rest of the fog in one fell swoop. Keith finds it on one of the middle shelves, framed in a simple black wooden frame. He remembers it being taken; it was the day of that stupid hoverbike accident. They had already planned an actual family photoshoot for the day, which was part of the reason why their mom was so furious with them, even after it turned out Keith didn’t sustain any serious injury. She still looks a little irked in the picture, even though she’s smiling; their dad looks vaguely amused, Shiro himself sheepish, and in the middle, there’s Keith, grinning like he’s proud of himself, a thick white stripe of gauze taped to his nose.

He stumbles onto the sofa rather than sits down on it; he can no longer see where any of the furniture is, and it’s sheer dumb luck he doesn’t knock his shin on the coffee table. Still holding the picture in one hand, he shields his face with the other as he stoops forward, teeth gritted as he cries in choked, gasping sobs.

_He’s gone. Shiro’s gone. He’s never coming back home. He’s **gone** –_

It shouldn’t feel _familiar_ , but somehow it does, and maybe that’s the worst part of it. Keith should have been too young to remember what it’s like to be completely alone in the world – and yet he does. In all honesty, anyone would say he’s still too young, at all of seventeen, to experience it. And Keith hates how he remembers this feeling, but doesn’t remember either of his birth parents – hates how it brings him a little bit of comfort that maybe this will help him figure out how to deal with his life from now on, when there is no comfort on Earth he actually wants right now – or even _deserves_.

 _Oh, God, and I got myself kicked out – Shiro would be so pissed with me._ No, that’s not quite right – Keith is pissed at himself, Shiro would be… disappointed. _Right, like that’s better._

Well, at least nobody is here to see or hear him break apart completely.

* * *

It’s – not really a _beginning_ , when the new day breaks. It still feels very much like the end of something. If Keith wanted to be really melodramatic, he’d say the end of his life as he knows it.  
(It’s true; he doesn’t remember anything from before he got adopted, so his brother has been a constant throughout the entirety of his memory.) But there is – something about watching the sun rise in the middle of the desert with not a soul nearby to witness it – or witness Keith’s messy hair and still tear-stained face as he climbs up onto the roof to watch it. There is no good purchase on the walls, so he has to give himself a boost from the seat of the hoverbike. As he looks back down at it from the edge of the roof, he stifles a sigh before sitting down. I guess that’s mine now.

He knows the momentary peace he feels spread in him as the sky lightens will not last too long. Everything is still too raw; there are moments in which it still feels like a bad dream; like he’ll wake up any moment in cold sweat, back at the Garrison, then go wake Shiro even if it annoys him, just to see him there. He’s not, though, and when these moments pass, Keith still feels suffocated. And of course, on top of everything, there is the aimlessness. He will have to figure out what to do next. Whether he should even stay out here.

But for now, for these few moments of stillness, Keith feels like he can breathe a little. _It has never happened before that nothing happened_ , is what Gran used to say. As silly as it sounds, it is idiosyncratic of her, and Keith knows it to be true. Even if he can imagine crystal clearly Shiro’s expression if he heard of Keith’s discharge, he knows his brother would not want him to give up.

As long as he keeps looking, he’ll find _something_.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/kudos would be super appreciated if you liked the story! If you want more of it / want to read our ongoing roleplays, check me out on [this blog](http://largehearts.tumblr.com)!
> 
> I also take requests at any time; message me at the above link, or leave me a comment here!


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